Good Parenting

Reading help for children with learning disabilities can be a time absorbing and costly task. With an assortment of tutors and teachers teaching reading strategies that differ in method and effectiveness, the child with learning disabilities may find themselves bewildered and frustrated by the complete experience.

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For the child with learning disabilities teaching reading strategies of different kinds may help in their reading. Some children are auditory based, some are visually based, the reading help for children requires to mirror the various styles of learning.

As a Behavioral Optometrist, my accent is clearly the visual side of things when considering reading help for children. I consider that all the suitable teaching reading strategies available will still not let a child with learning disabilities to reach their full potential if their visual skill development is lacking.

Reading help for children does not simply mean making the child with learning disabilities to read more and more. This is not genuine reading help for children, it is torment for both the child with learning disabilities and the poor parents who are teaching these reading strategies! The result is unhappy, stressed out, aggravated and discouraged parents, and children who feel the same way concerning reading.

To provide true reading help for children we want to step back and, instead of making the child with learning disabilities go through the misery of repetitive reading tasks, we must take time out to teach them the visual skills required for their success. These include things like focus, eye coordination, eye movement control and tracking, visualization for learning spelling, sequencing, left right recognition and a whole host of other skills.

Training these fundamental visual skills can give reading help for children by giving them the raw skills to do the tasks they want to do when reading.

If you wanted the teach your child the piano, the key is not to make them sit at the piano again and again, is it? The solution is to get training for them, so that they can advance the skills they need to play.

It is the same thing with reading. Merely making them do the function over and over is not the solution. To present true and critical reading help for children, whether a child with learning disabilities or even a normal reader, we are far better to educate them the fundamental visual skills they want rather than teaching reading strategies that help them to cope with the lack of visual skills they are grappling with!

Teaching reading strategies to help them muddle through is a band aid, trying to cover the problem rather than solve it. Making the child to read with a ruler under the words, or their finger under the words may improve their reading, but how much more will we help that child if we teach their eye movements so they can read easily without artificial aids!

Does this mean that I imagine there is no place for teaching reading strategies? Not at all, since if we take a little time out to sharpen the visual skills of a child with learning disabilities, it is then time to employ the reading strategies, and they will confront with great success because the child has the skills to do the task!

So, there is genuine reading help for children available, and my program “Learning @ Lightspeed” can offer the basis upon which teachers and tutors can build. With the right skills developed, and the appropriate teaching reading strategies in place, there is hope for the child with learning disabilities to reach their complete potential in school.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Good Parenting.